Entre histoire et mémoire. Les publications des landsmanshaftn juives polonaises dans la France d’après-guerre

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Between History and Memory. The Publications of Polish-Jewish landsmanshaftn Societies in post-War France Until the 1960s, landsmanshaftn societies included more than 10,000 families in Paris alone, or three-quarters of Yiddish-speaking Jews. Composed mainly of Holocaust survivors, these societies gradually shifted from providing social services to serving as social spaces in which survivors could gather and share their memories of their traumatic experiences. They encouraged the publication of various memorial writings – from Memorial books (yizker bikher) to historical essays and, sometimes, literary testimonies. This article analyses all known publications from these landsmanshaftn societies between 1946 and the 1960s. Their distinctive features – such as the importance of war experiences in France, single-author-publications or the emergence in Paris of the Memorial Book’s literary model – reflect the particularities of the Yiddish-speaking Holocaust survivors’ community living in France, compared to their brethren – and interlocutors – in America or in Israel.